Against Empathy

In Against Empathy by Paul Bloom, we get to take an exciting look into what it feels like to take an unpopular stance. The book makes the moral case for compassion. And more than that takes on empathy (feeling of others’ emotions) on as the enemy. It’s a very interesting book that has already sparked some interesting conversations.

Use your head, not your heart

This is what I think gets the most pushback. You may ask, ‘why not use my heart, that is what makes me a moral person!’. And I totally get that. That is also how I would react instinctively. Wouldn’t we all start killing each other when there is no more heart involved? Bloom argues for a no.

One of the main arguments he puts forward is that empathy has a spotlight effect. We focus on certain people, in the here and now. Empathy is not what will lead you to donate malaria nets or make you care about climate change (how would you even see or feel that). Things we should very much care about are not touched upon by empathy. Compassion and rationality, Bloom argues, is much better at this.

Here it is in Bloom’s words:

“Empathy is a spotlight focusing on certain people in the here and now. This makes us care more about them, but it leaves us insensitive to the long-term consequences of our acts and blind as well to the suffering of those we do not or cannot empathize with. Empathy is biased, pushing us in the direction of parochialism and racism. It is shortsighted, motivating actions that might make things better in the short term but lead to tragic results in the future. It is innumerate, favoring the one over the many. It can spark violence; our empathy for those close to us is a powerful force for war and atrocity toward others. It is corrosive in personal relationships; it exhausts the spirit and can diminish the force of kindness and love.”

 

So you are forewarned, read this book at your own peril (but do very much read it).

 

Some more notes

Bloom is not arguing against morality, compassion, kindness, love, being a good neighbour, being a mensch, or doing the right thing. He defines empathy as: “The act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does.” His examples suggest that many moral actions, such as saving a drowning child, require no empathy. He also argues that empathy can lead someone to avoid a painful situation, such as seeing a beggar on the street or living next to a Nazi camp, or to act unfairly by moving one ill child ahead of sicker children in a queue.

“If you absorb the suffering of others, then you’re less able to help them in the long run because achieving long-term goals often requires inflicting short-term pain.” Psychopaths may, in Bloom’s account, have empathy while lacking moral guidelines and self-control. We can read another person’s, or a dog’s or cat’s, mind without feeling their feelings. The identifiable victim effect helps explain why an individual elicits a stronger response than a larger number of people. Bloom also argues that we care most about people like us, a pattern the notes connect to The Selfish Gene, and about things that catch our attention, such as the $27.000 rescue of a dog from a well, which the notes compare with the cost of saving a life.

These arguments extend to parenting, where withholding a second ice cream can be kind, and to foreign aid, which Bloom says can backfire. My notes mention “orphans” and economic dependency without developing the orphan example. Both liberals and conservatives make empathetic appeals. He distinguishes compassion, feeling for another person, from empathy, feeling with them.

The book rejects the idea of moral monsters: people who do evil usually believe they are doing the right thing. Empathy for one’s own group can motivate violence against another. This fits the broader point that we are often irrational beings (see Thinking, Fast and Slow).